by David Marcum
Stephen Herczeg is an IT Geek, writer, actor, and film-maker based in Canberra Australia. He has been writing for over twenty years and has completed a couple of dodgy novels, sixteen feature length screenplays, and numerous short stories and scripts. Stephen was very successful in 2017’s International Horror Hotel screenplay competition, with his scripts TITAN winning the Sci-Fi category and Dark are the Woods placing second in the horror category. His work has featured in Sproutlings - A Compendium of Little Fictions from Hunter Anthologies, the Hells Bells Christmas horror anthology published by the Australasian Horror Writers Association, and the Below the Stairs, Trickster’s Treats, Shades of Santa, Behind the Mask, and Beyond the Infinite anthologies from OzHorror.Con, The Body Horror Book, Anemone Enemy, and Petrified Punks from Oscillate Wildly Press, and Sherlock Holmes In the Realms of H.G. Wells and Sherlock Holmes: Adventures Beyond the Canon from Belanger Books.
Mike Hogan (with a story in Part XII as well!) writes mostly historical novels and short stories, many set in Victorian London and featuring Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. He read the Conan Doyle stories at school with great enjoyment, but hadn’t thought much about Sherlock Holmes until, having missed the Granada/Jeremy Brett TV series when it was originally shown in the eighties, he came across a box set of videos in a street market and was hooked on Holmes again. He started writing Sherlock Holmes pastiches several years ago, having great fun re-imagining situations for the Conan Doyle characters to act in. The relationship between Holmes and Watson fascinates him as one of the great literary friendships. (He’s also a huge admirer of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels). Like Captain Aubrey and Doctor Maturin, Holmes and Watson are an odd couple, differing in almost every facet of their characters, but sharing a common sense of decency and a common humanity. Living with Sherlock Holmes can’t have been easy, and Mike enjoys adding a stronger vein of “pawky humour” into the Conan Doyle mix, even letting Watson have the second-to-last word on occasions. His books include Sherlock Holmes and the Scottish Question, the forthcoming The Gory Season - Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper and the Thames Torso Murders and the Sherlock Holmes & Young Winston 1887 Trilogy (The Deadwood Stage; The Jubilee Plot; and The Giant Moles), He has also written the following short story collections: Sherlock Holmes: Murder at the Savoy and Other Stories, Sherlock Holmes: The Skull of Kohada Koheiji and Other Stories, and Sherlock Holmes: Murder on the Brighton Line and Other Stories. www.mikehoganbooks.com
Roger Johnson BSI, ASH is a retired librarian, now working as a volunteer assistant at the Essex Police Museum. In his spare time, he is commissioning editor of The Sherlock Holmes Journal, an occasional lecturer, and a frequent contributor to The Writings About the Writings. His sole work of Holmesian pastiche was published in 1997 in Mike Ashley’s anthology The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures, and he has the greatest respect for the many authors who have contributed new tales to the present mighty trilogy. Like his wife, Jean Upton, he is a member of both The Baker Street Irregulars and The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes.
Arlene Mantin Levy RN retired to Colorado in 2015. She practiced as a Critical Care/Trauma Specialist for thirty-eight years in Miami, Florida. During the last four years in Florida, she was a member of the scion Tropical Deerstalkers, and since moving to Evergreen, she and husband Mark are members of the scion Dr. Watson’s Neglected Patients.
Mark Levy BSI is an intellectual property attorney and a member of the Baker Street Irregulars. He holds a B.S. degree in Physics from NYU Polytechnic University, a J.D. degree from New York Law School, and an M.A. degree in creative writing from Wilkes University. His passion is writing. He has contributed articles or letters to The Baker Street Journal, The New York Times, The Mensa Bulletin, The Skeptical Inquirer, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Videomaker Magazine, and The Journal of Irreproducible Results. His short, humorous essays are broadcast on the public radio show, Weekend Radio, and a collection of those polymathic essays, Trophy Envy.
David Marcum (who also has a story in Volume III) plays The Game with deadly seriousness. He first discovered Sherlock Holmes in 1975, at the age of ten, when he received an abridged version of The Adventures during a trade. Since that time, David has collected literally thousands of traditional Holmes pastiches in the form of novels, short stories, radio and television episodes, movies and scripts, comics, fan-fiction, and unpublished manuscripts. He is the author of The Papers of Sherlock Holmes Vol.’s I and II (2011, 2013), Sherlock Holmes and A Quantity of Debt (2013, 2016), Sherlock Holmes - Tangled Skeins (2015, 2017), and The Papers of Solar Pons (2017). Additionally, he is the editor of the three-volume set Sherlock Holmes in Montague Street (2014, recasting Arthur Morrison’s Martin Hewitt stories as early Holmes adventures,), the two-volume collection of Great Hiatus stories, Holmes Away From Home (2016), Sherlock Holmes: Before Baker Street (2017), Imagination Theatre’s Sherlock Holmes (2017), the authorized eight-volume reissues of the Solar Pons stories, the three-volume set of Canonical Sequels Sherlock Holmes: Adventures Beyond the Canon, and a number of forthcoming volumes including a Solar Anthology and the complete Dr. Thorndyke adventures. Additionally, he is the creator and editor of the ongoing collection, The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories (2015–), now at twelve volumes, with another in preparation as of this writing. He has contributed stories, essays, and scripts to The Baker Street Journal, The Strand Magazine, The Watsonian, Beyond Watson, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, About Sixty, About Being a Sherlockian, The Solar Pons Gazette, Imagination Theater, The Proceedings of the Pondicherry Lodge, and The Gazette, the journal of the Nero Wolfe Wolfe Pack. He began his adult work life as a Federal Investigator for an obscure U.S. Government agency, before the organization was eliminated. He returned to school for a second degree, and is now a licensed Civil Engineer, living in Tennessee with his wife and son. He is a member of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London, The Nashville Scholars of the Three Pipe Problem (The Engineer’s Thumb”), The Occupants of the Full House, The Diogenes Club of Washington, D.C., The Tankerville Club (all Scions of The Baker Street Irregulars), The Sherlock Holmes Society of India (as a Patron), The John H. Watson Society (“Marker”), The Praed Street Irregulars (“The Obrisset Snuff Box”), The Solar Pons Society of London, and The Diogenes Club West (East Tennessee Annex), a curious and unofficial Scion of one. Since the age of nineteen, he has worn a deerstalker as his regular-and-only hat from autumn to spring. In 2013, he and his deerstalker were finally able make his first trip-of-a-lifetime Holmes Pilgrimage to England, with return Pilgrimages in 2015 and 2016, where you may have spotted him. If you ever run into him and his deerstalker out and about, feel free to say hello!
Will Murray is the author of over seventy novels, including forty Destroyer novels and seven posthumous Doc Savage collaborations with Lester Dent, under the name Kenneth Robeson, for Bantam Books in the 1990’s. Since 2011, he has written fourteen additional Doc Savage adventures for Altus Press, two of which co-starred The Shadow, as well as a solo Pat Savage novel. His 2015 Tarzan novel, Return to Pal-Ul-Don, was followed by King Kong vs. Tarzan in 2016. Murray has written short stories featuring such classic characters as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Ant-Man, the Hulk, Honey West, the Spider, the Avenger, the Green Hornet, the Phantom, and Cthulhu. A previous Murray Sherlock Holmes story appeared in Moonstone’s Sherlock Holmes: The Crossovers Casebook, and another is forthcoming in Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not, involving H. P. Lovecraft’s Dr. Herbert West. Additionally, his “The Adventure of the Glassy Ghost” appeared in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part VIII - Eliminate the Impossible: 1892-1905.
Paul W. Nash is a librarian, bibliographer, and printing historian. He has worked at the Royal Institute of British Architect’s Library in London and the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and is currently editor of The Journal of the Printing Historical Society. He writes fiction and composes music as a relaxation.
Sidney Paget
(1860–1908), a few of whose illustrations are used within this anthology, was born in London, and like his two older brothers, became a famed illustrator and painter. He completed over three-hundred-and-fifty drawings for the Sherlock Holmes stories that were first published in The Strand magazine, defining Holmes’s image forever after in the public mind.
Robert Perret is a writer, librarian, and devout Sherlockian living on the Palouse. His Sherlockian publications include “The Canaries of Clee Hills Mine” in An Improbable Truth: The Paranormal Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, “For King and Country” in The Science of Deduction, and “How Hope Learned the Trick” in NonBinary Review. He considers himself to be a pan-Sherlockian and a one-man Scion out on the lonely moors of Idaho. Robert has recently authored a yet-unpublished scholarly article tentatively entitled “A Study in Scholarship: The Case of the Baker Street Journal’. More information is available at www.robertperret.com
Gayle Lange Puhl has been a Sherlockian since Christmas of 1965. She has had articles published in The Devon County Chronicle, The Baker Street Journal, and The Serpentine Muse, plus her local newspaper. She has created Sherlockian jewelry, a 2006 calendar entitled “If Watson Wrote For TV”, and has painted a limited series of Holmes-related nesting dolls. She co-founded the scion Friends of the Great Grimpen Mire and the Janesville, Wisconsin-based The Original Tree Worshipers. In January 2016, she was awarded the “Outstanding Creative Writer” award by the Janesville Art Alliance for her first book Sherlock Holmes and the Folk Tale Mysteries. She is semi-retired and lives in Evansville, Wisconsin. Ms. Puhl has one daughter, Gayla, and four grandchildren.
Tracy J. Revels, a Sherlockian from the age of eleven, is a professor of history at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. She is a member of The Survivors of the Gloria Scott and The Studious Scarlets Society, and is a past recipient of the Beacon Society Award. Almost every semester, she teaches a class that covers The Canon, either to college students or to senior citizens. She is also the author of three supernatural Sherlockian pastiches with MX (Shadowfall, Shadowblood, and Shadowwraith), and a regular contributor to her scion’s newsletter. She also has some notoriety as an author of very silly skits: For proof, see “The Adventure of the Adversarial Adventuress” and “Occupy Baker Street” on YouTube. When not studying Sherlock, she can be found researching the history of her native state, and has written books on Florida in the Civil War and on the development of Florida’s tourism industry.
Roger Riccard of Los Angeles, California, U.S.A., is a descendant of the Roses of Kilravock in Highland Scotland. He is the author of two previous Sherlock Holmes novels, The Case of the Poisoned Lilly and The Case of the Twain Papers, a series of short stories in two volumes, Sherlock Holmes: Adventures for the Twelve Days of Christmas and Further Adventures for the Twelve Days of Christmas, and the new series A Sherlock Holmes Alphabet of Cases, all of which are published by Baker Street Studios. He has another novel and a non-fiction Holmes reference work in various stages of completion. He became a Sherlock Holmes enthusiast as a teenager (many, many years ago), and, like all fans of The Great Detective, yearned for more stories after reading The Canon over and over. It was the Granada Television performances of Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke, and the encouragement of his wife, Rosilyn, that at last inspired him to write his own Holmes adventures, using the Granada actor portrayals as his guide. He has been called “The best pastiche writer since Val Andrews” by the Sherlockian E-Times.
David Ruffle was born in Northamptonshire in England a long, long time ago. He has lived in the beautiful town of Lyme Regis on the Dorset coast for the last twelve years. His first foray into writing was the 2009 self-published, Sherlock Holmes and the Lyme Regis Horror. This was swiftly followed by two more Holmes novellas set in Lyme, and a Holmes children’s book, Sherlock Holmes and the Missing Snowman. Since then, there has been four further Holmes novellas, including the critically acclaimed End Peace, three contemporary comedies, and a slim volume detailing the life of Jack the Ripper. When not writing, he can be found working in a local shop, ‘acting’ in local productions, and occasionally performing poetry locally. To come next year is Sherlock Holmes and the Scarborough Affair, a collaboration with Gill Stammers, in which David is very much the junior partner.
Hailing from Bedford, in the South East of England, Matthew Simmonds has been a confirmed devotee of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous creation since first watching Jeremy Brett’s incomparable portrayal of the world’s first consulting detective, on a Tuesday evening in April, 1984, while curled up on the sofa with his father. He has written numerous short stories, and his first novel, Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of The Pigtail Twist, was published in 2018. A sequel is nearly complete, which he hopes to publish in the near future. Matthew currently co-owns Harrison & Simmonds, the fifth-generation family business, a renowned County tobacconist, pipe and gift shop on Bedford High Street.
Richard Dean Starr has written or edited more than two-hundred articles, columns, stories, books, comics, screenplays, and graphic novels since the age of seventeen. His original fiction and non-fiction has appeared in magazines and newspapers as varied as Cemetery Dance, Science Fiction Chronicle, The Southeast Georgian, The Camden County Tribune, Suspense Magazine, and Starlog. His licensed media tie-in stories have appeared in anthologies including Hellboy: Odder Jobs, Kolchak: The Night Stalker Casebook, Tales of Zorro, The Lone Ranger Chronicles, and The Green Hornet Casebook, just to name a few. In addition, Starr co-authored Unnaturally Normal, the first Kolchak: The Night Stalker/Dan Shamble: Zombie P.I. team up comic book with New York Times bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson, and co-edited the Captain Action comics line with Matthew Baugh. As a recognized film industry script consultant, Starr has contributed to feature motion pictures starring acclaimed actors including Malcolm McDowell, Tom Sizemore, Amber Tamblyn, Haley Joel Osment, Costas Mandylor, Robert Culp, Richmond Arquette, and Zach Galifianakis, among others.
Kevin P. Thornton has experienced a Taliban rocket attack in Kabul and a terrorist bombing in Johannesburg. He lives in Fort McMurray, Alberta, the town that burnt down in 2016. He has been shortlisted for the Crime Writers of Canada Unhanged writing award six times. He’s never won. He was also a finalist for best short story in 2014 - the year Margaret Atwood entered. We’re not saying he has luck issues, but don’t bet on his stock tips. Born in Kenya, Kevin was a child in New Zealand, a student and soldier in Africa, a military contractor in Afghanistan, a forklift driver in Ontario, and an oilfield worker in North Western Canada. He writes poems that start out just fine, but turn ruder and cruder over time. From limerick to doggerel, they earn less than bugger-all, even though they all manage to rhyme. He also likes writing about Sherlock Holmes and dislikes writing about himself in the third person.
Marcia Wilson is a freelance researcher and illustrator who likes to work in a style compatible for the color blind and visually impaired. She is Canon-centric, and her first MX offering, You Buy Bones, uses the point-of-view of Scotland Yard to show the unique talents of Dr. Watson. This continued with the publication of Test of the Professionals: The Adventure of the Flying Blue Pidgeon and The Peaceful Night Poisonings. She can be contacted at: gravelgirty.deviantart.com
The following contributions appear in the companion volume:
The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories
Part XII - Some Untold Cases (1894-1902)
“Anon.” is a devoted Sherlockian and player of The Game.
Derrick Belanger (who also has a story in Volume III) is an educator and also the author of the #1 bestselling book in its category, Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Peculiar Provenance, which was in the top 200 bestselling books on Amazon. He also is the author of The MacDougall Twins with Sherlock Holmes books, and he edited the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle horror anthology A Study in Terror: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Revolutionary Stories of Fear and the Supernatural. Mr. Belanger co-owns
the publishing company Belanger Books, which released the Sherlock Holmes anthologies Beyond Watson, Holmes Away From Home: Adventures from the Great Hiatus Volumes 1 and 2, Sherlock Holmes: Before Baker Street, and Sherlock Holmes: Adventures in the Realms of H.G. Wells Volumes I and2. Derrick resides in Colorado and continues compiling unpublished works by Dr. John H. Watson.
Nick Cardillo has loved Sherlock Holmes ever since he was first introduced to the detective in The Great Illustrated Classics edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes at the age of six. His devotion to the Baker Street detective duo has only increased over the years, and Nick is thrilled to be taking these proper steps into the Sherlock Holmes Community. His first published story, “The Adventure of the Traveling Corpse”, appeared in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part VI: 2017 Annual, and his “The Haunting of Hamilton Gardens” was published in PART VIII - Eliminate the Impossible: 1892-1905. A devout fan of The Golden Age of Detective Fiction, Hammer Horror, and Doctor Who, Nick co-writes the Sherlockian blog, Back on Baker Street, which analyses over seventy years of Sherlock Holmes film and culture. He is a student at Susquehanna University.
C.H. Dye first discovered Sherlock Holmes when she was eleven, in a collection that ended at the Reichenbach Falls. It was another six months before she discovered The Hound of the Baskervilles, and two weeks after that before a librarian handed her The Return. She has loved the stories ever since. She has written fan-fiction, and her first published pastiche, “The Tale of the Forty Thieves”, was included in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part I: 1881-1889. Her story “A Christmas Goose” was in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part V: Christmas Adventures, and “The Mysterious Mourner” in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part VIII - Eliminate the Impossible: 1892-1905